I saw them at the food hall sometimes. Briefly. More elusive than the spirits themselves. Faces like mine, half-obscured under hoods, and hands like mine too. Glimpses caught fleeting. Always on their way somewhere. And if they noticed me, they’d stand square and spear through me with their gaze. Like territorial cats spotting a newcomer across a street. My rough cloak tight around me, I kept my head down and gave them their space.

  Plus I dreaded the idea of them asking questions, too many prying questions about where I’d come from and why I was here. Questions gave answers, even the ones you didn’t mean to give. In the wrong hands, those could see me shipped out to the war front within the week. I wouldn’t even have to change my clothes.

  So people at the Institute mostly kept their distance from me, which was fine since I mostly kept my distance from them. Mostly. Holly and Grove were always and invariably nice, much more than they should’ve been. Holly showed me around, from the corner where she’d first kissed Pepper to the study hall table that was always inexplicably ten degrees hotter than the rest of the room, to the path they’d all chased across the quad following a twelve-legged crimson newt, and she did it in a way that almost made it feel homely. Grove offered to perform some elemancy to get the huge ink patches out of my kit bag and clothes, which by then I’d accepted about as much as the horns on my head. “It’s chill. Removing ink stains is about fifty percent what you’ll use elemancy for in your second semester.”

  “What’s the other fifty percent?”

  “Making ink stains appear on other people’s stuff,” they said with a grin.

  And then there was Kaspar. He had this fascinating way of turning up to classes like he’d lived through them several times before. Study notes always complete, nothing to ask; he minded himself and got on with the work. Most every other student had this constant wide-eyed franticness about them: either loud and abrasive, some starting debates with the less strict professors for a snide laugh – especially Stack and his clique in the classes I had the misfortune to share with them – or the same feverish expression but turned inwards, clinging by the clawtips to every word in case a vital one was missed, who had to break through a stranglehold to answer whenever their name was called.

  Not Kaspar. While the rest of us scrambled like a skulk of foxes on a midnight raid of the town’s bins, he strolled easily through, picking up what he needed as it came his way. No yapping, no digging, no fussing. Us wide-eyed; him like he’d just woken from the most restful slumber, or like he was due on a comfy hammock within the half-hundred. While we scrambled like foxes, he loped like an old wolf. He had me mesmerised. I'd asked him stuff here and there and sometimes he didn’t really answer, or it sounded kind of practiced, and he didn’t really ask back much, but that was fine.

  “Do you ever feel like people are watching you?” I asked toward the end of a riveting transmutation lesson on how to make a piece of bark look like a slightly different piece of bark.

  “Just you, I’d posit,” he replied in that easy, practiced, princely tone.

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  “I haven’t been looking at you,” I said quickly. “Well, a normal amount. I haven’t been avoiding –”

  “I meant just you feel like that.” He’d already made his bark look like the intended end result, of course he had. I’d given up on mine for the day. “I’d further suggest it may be because you shopped at the same place they weave potato sacks.”

  “This potato sack has kept me warm for six deepfrosts, thank you very much. I did have a chip on my shoulder when I first wore it, but only cos I hadn’t cleared them all out of it yet.”

  “Very nice, Gan,” he said with a wry smile. “But you can burn paper on command now. Managed to get yourself best in the class at it. You can keep warm. Don’t you want something nicer?”

  I grumbled under my breath. “I haven’t the coin. My Felday work will barely cover my semester fees by the time they’re due and that’s assuming I can work through waist-deep snow for a couple of months.”

  “Then let me pay for it.”

  “Let you what, sorry?”

  His voice got a little lower. “I think I can trust you a bit more now. I’ll buy you a nice robe. Whatever you want.”

  “Really? Because I’ve seen some stores and the prices on their windows are…”

  “Whatever you want. Call it my treat for you.”

  “...Why?”

  He poked at his bark. “You ask rather a lot of questions. Let people do nice acts. It doesn’t need the suspicion.”

  “Sorry. I’m not used to people just doing nice stuff. Especially, uh, not for me.”

  “Shame. You ought to be.” He still said his words like a prince. “Are you free this afternoon?”

  *

  I was, but Kaspar fixed that. We wove through Baronbridge’s upmarket quarter, which was so exclusive even the street rats strode around up on their hind legs. I found a few robes I could see myself in, even if they were a day’s march fancier than anything I’d ever worn before – but then a quick glance at the price and I had to stop myself hacking like I had a hairball. And then he brought me down a narrow ginnel to some opulent courtyard, all paving stones and grass verges and refined air. Where I came from, we took our backstreets air by the bowlful. Here, I swore they were scenting it.

  “I encountered this tailor the first week I arrived.” Kaspar eased the door open like it was the front door of a close friend’s house. An old lady stood straighter than an arrow behind the counter, and they exchanged curt nods before she went back to a woman who was more silvery than any coin I’d ever used. “I’ve sought their wares exclusively since, and while they do offer some really nice bespoke items, I –”

  “That one,” I said absently. My hands were on it before my mind caught up. A cloudy midnight tone all over except for a warm amber lining all down the hem. Sleeker than an ice sheet, softer than a bed sheet. “And I swear I’m not looking at the price tag.” Kaspar took it from its stand eerily designed to resemble another human being or at least the upper half, examined it, and held it out as I slipped into it. A little on the large side, but I never wanted to take it off. “Can I have it?”

  “Of course,” he said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. And when the other customer left, he pulled longsquares from his pocket and laid them in front of the tailor like they were nothing more than seed pods. Ten of them. I had to hang onto the counter edge to keep myself upright. And while she folded it like the old folk did with their handkerchiefs, they exchanged pleasantries in that Clearlander way I never got the hang of, and though she eyed me with curiosity, it never felt like disdain. Not quite.

  She decanted the robe into a canvas bag and handed it to him, and he handed it to me on the way out. “How in all the fine and mighty hells do you have that kind of coin?” I asked in a hushed tone even though we were still in the fanciest courtyard I’d ever been in. Probably the only courtyard I’d ever been in.

  “My family are… mercantile. Across the continent. You don’t need to keep asking about such matters. Learn to appreciate good when it comes your way.”